


Tell-All

by bluebandit



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Gen, Reveal, Tell-all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-16 20:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1361509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebandit/pseuds/bluebandit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guess who finally gets to hear everything about everything! (It's Olive.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So it's always bothered me how they never end up telling poor Olive any of their secrets. Maybe they would've if the show had continued, but who knows.

It was winter, the Pie Maker’s favorite time of year. It was his favorite time of year because he could hold the mittened hand of the girl he loved without fear of sending her back to her death with a brush of his cursed skin. At this moment, however, the Pie Maker and the aforementioned love of his life were standing in the dimly lit Pie Hole kitchen after closing hours along with Private Investigator Emerson Cod. The Pie Maker was clad in his black henley and charcoal pinstriped vest with black jeans and his ever-present white-tipped plimsolls and furrowed brow. His mittened accomplice in life and love, otherwise known as Chuck, was standing beside him dressed to the nines in a bright red overcoat opened to reveal a deep blue buttoned dress with a cinched waist and matching black pumps with a wool beanie and mittens. Emerson Cod, in his ankle-length dark brown overcoat and silken shirt and scarf, stood on the other side of Ned the Pie Maker.

  
The three of them were huddled together facing the kitchen door through which Olive Snook in her creamsicle orange Pie Hole uniform had just barged. The Pie Maker had just finished blurting out, rather loudly, “If I hadn’t brought you back to life --” only to be interrupted by Olive banging through the kitchen door. “If you hadn’t what?”

  
It was clear Olive had heard every last word. Chuck’s jaw dropped. Emerson Cod cursed to himself. Ned’s eye twitched.

  
“N-nothing. Nothing at all,” Ned stammered, completely unconvincingly in Olive’s opinion. Olive narrowed her eyes, Chuck reached a gloved hand forward and grasped Ned’s hand in hers, as Emerson Cod grumbled, “oh hell no,” more audibly this time, and attempted to sneak out of the kitchen. This proved difficult considering his girth and significant height, and Olive froze him with a narrowed eye.

  
“Alright, that’s enough!” Olive began indignantly. “Enough of the secrets, enough of the drug muling, and enough of the exclusion. No more protecting me. I seem to be the only one not in on the skinny around here, and I’d like that remedied. Now. Right now. Tell me everything.” At this, Olive stomped her foot, and all four foot eleven of her radiated distaste and anger at being left out of the loop. She stood breathing hard, steaming after her diatribe, hopeful that she’d at least gotten her point across. She was tired of feeling just out of the loop with these people she considered her close friends.

  
The trio before her seemed to come back to life after being frozen by Olive’s outburst. She watched her beloved Pie Maker squeeze the gloved hand of Chuck, who in turn squeezed back and turned to him with a worried look. Something seemed to pass between them without verbal communication, as they turned simultaneously back towards Olive with the same troubled expression. Emerson Cod had his head in his hands and seemed to be mumbling to himself. Olive only caught snippets of what sounded like, “...unbelievable,” and yet another “...oh hell no” from between his fingers.

  
Chuck took a deep breath, “Ok, Olive. Full-fledged membership and all access pass to the PI Palooza coming right up. Give Ned and me a minute?” The Pie Maker’s eye twitched violently. Olive almost cracked a smile. She did so love him.

  
“Fine,” she declared, “I’ll give you one minute, sixty seconds of privacy.”

  
At this, Ned furrowed his thick brows and whined, “Oh, why does it have to be a minute? Can’t we have five?” Chuck raised her eyebrows at his childish tone.  
“Three minutes. That’s final,” Olive declared. She straightened up and stomped out of the kitchen, leaving the Pie Maker and Chuck alone. Emerson Cod seemed to have managed to sneak out of the Pie Hole in the middle of the yelling match.

  
“We can’t tell her!” Ned cried, turning again to face Chuck.

  
“We have to tell her!” Chuck said at the same time.

  
Ned took a deep breath and lowered his voice, “we can’t tell her, Chuck. It’s too risky.” Ned couldn’t figure out what to do with his arms, and after waving them about for a few seconds, settled on crossing them tightly across his chest.

  
“What’s too risky?” Chuck asked in a harsh whisper, “She’s my friend, and it’s not fair! You know I hate secrets. Why can’t I just share this one with her?”

  
“Because,” Ned implored, “you heard her, she’s got so many secrets already she’s about to explode. The last time this happened she quit and became a nun, remember? And besides, you know what my secret getting out will do, to me and you.” That’s final, he didn’t say. Ned’s tone suggested he intended to end the conversation there, but Chuck was having none of it.

  
“So we’ll make sure she knows exactly the risks of telling people, and she’ll keep our secret because we trust her to. She’s my best friend, and the closest thing I have to a sister. I trust her completely. Don’t you?”

  
“But what if she tells Randy Mann? What if he tells someone else, and they tell someone else, and suddenly everyone in the entirety of Papen County knows, and they all come to my door with pitchforks and torches, intent on destroying me and as a direct result, you?!” Ned was whisper-yelling now. He had crossed his arms so tightly across his chest that his ribs hurt from the pressure. He liked it that way though. He felt it kept him safe.

  
Chuck sighed and unwrapped Ned’s vise-like grip on himself to wind herself into his arms in a well-protected hug. She sighed again. She felt so safe in his arms, despite the fact that she really wasn’t at all. “I know. I know you’re scared. I know you’re reluctant to tell anyone else, but I think it’ll be good for you.” She rested her chin on his chest and looked into his dark eyes. He looked so scared. She longed to kiss his fears away but was out of reach of any plastic wrap and didn’t feel much like moving anyway. “We’ll do it together, okay? Just like always. You and me against the world. Right?”

  
Ned sighed and pressed his forehead to Chuck’s hatted one squeezed her tighter. He took a shaky breath, “Okay. Together.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i literally have no excuse for why this took so long. i'm trash. trash queen.

Ned and Chuck were still pressed together through their clothes when Olive stormed in not thirty seconds later. She glared at them and Chuck couldn’t help but notice the sadness in her eyes. However, it passed quickly and became something more like barely-concealed rage. Chuck disentangled her limbs from Ned.

  
“Alright, let’s get a move-on!” Olive snapped and gestured wildly for she and Ned to walk ahead of her out of the kitchen. Chuck glanced at Ned, whose expressive face showed outright terror. She chuckled to herself and took his hand again to lead him out into the seating area of the Pie Hole. Olive followed them out and stopped walking once they were out of the kitchen. She crossed her arms and started tapping a foot. Chuck nudged Ned, who squeaked,

  
“Let’s.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s. Um. Start with the fruit.” He waved an arm towards the freezer then crossed it back over his chest again. He still hadn’t moved. Chuck turned to stand in front of him and carefully unravelled his arms from around himself. she squeezed his hand through her mittens and nodded. She tried to communicate that she’d still be there for him, no matter what.

  
“Together, remember?” She squeezed his hand again and pulled him over to the freezer door, Olive trailing expectantly behind. Chuck nodded encouragingly and he squeezed her hand again before dropping it to fish around for the key around his neck. He glanced at an impatient Olive, who simply glared back and kept tapping her foot.

  
With shaking hands, he shoved the key into the lock and turned. The heavy door swung open silently, rather ominously, Chuck thought. Olive wasted no time marching right in and exclaiming,

  
“Right. Fruit. The last time I was in here we got shut down by a health inspector and I still don’t have an explanation for all the dead fruit in here. So, dead fruit.” She held out a hand towards Ned, palm up, and pointed to the neatly stacked fruit with the other. Ned’s eyes had been getting progressively larger as she’d talked, and Chuck was starting to worry they might pop out of his head altogether. Olive had her hands on her hips and was looking ready to start up a new rhythm with her toe when,

  
“I can bring dead things back to life!” Ned yelled. He smacked a hand over his mouth in the silent room as though he could stuff the words back in, looking just as surprised as Chuck felt at his outburst. He looked with eyes the size of saucers at Olive, whose face was carefully blank.

  
Chuck cleared her throat and began to explain. “I didn’t fake my death. I died. Ned found me and brought me back. Same with Digby. But there’s some drawbacks. Have you noticed how he doesn’t touch Digby? Or me, for that matter?” Olive nodded, brows furrowed, and muttered,

  
“I thought you were just allergic.” Her eyes snapped up to Chuck’s, understanding flooding her expressive face, “your skin condition.” Chuck noded and looked over to Ned, who looked like he was about to vibrate out of his own skin, he was shaking so hard. Her stomach dropped and she quickly walked back over to him standing by the door. She took his hand again,

  
“Ned, do you want to show Olive what happens when you touch the fruit?” Her voice seemed to snap him out of wherever he’d been, back to the present. He blinked a few times to clear his head and nodded stiffly. Together, they walked over to the stacks of dead fruit. Ned held out a still-shaking hand, index finger hovering over a pile of strawberries. Chuck put her hand on his other wrist and let her finger hover over the button on his wristwatch. He glanced at her, then at Olive, who was looking more and more impatient by the minute, then back to Chuck, who nodded encouragingly. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tapped the top-most strawberry. Chuck pushed the timer.

  
The strawberry did, predictably, what dead things had been doing for him for as long as Chuck had known him, perhaps longer. The mold melted away, the healthy red color returned, the plumpness restored. Ned peeked an eye open and looked again at Chuck, who smiled reassuringly, over to the strawberry, then finally to Olive, who looked like she was concentrating on solving a very difficult math problem in her head.

  
“Do it again,” she demanded. Ned cleared his throat and touched another strawberry, watching as it came back to life as well.

  
“I store dead fruit in here to use in the pies after I’ve brought it back to life,” Ned explained quietly, speaking mostly to the floor. “It’s why I can’t ever, uh….eat the pies.” At this, he looked over to Chuck, and her heart broke for him, for them and all they could never be. She smiled sadly back at him and carefully enveloped him in another tight hug. Over his shoulder, she watched the daisies in the windowsill wilt and die, and squeezed him tighter.

  
“Well,” Olive muttered from the corner, still looking like the math problem was giving her trouble. “Guess that explains the plastic, huh?” Chuck lets go of Ned and turns around to face Olive.

  
“You can’t tell anyone, you know that, right? Emerson knows, obviously, but aside from that --”

  
“I know! Of course I know,” Olive interrupted. “I appreciate you telling me, really, but what I don’t appreciate is being left out of the loop for so long. I can tell this is not something you share very often, and for a good reason, but I’m supposed to be your friend. You were supposed to trust me. I trusted you! Would it have been so hard to return the favor? I could have helped you!” At this point, Olive is waving her hands around, gesticulating rather violently, and pacing back and forth in the small freezer. Chuck stopped her in her tracks and took her by the shoulders, an apology on her tongue.

  
“I know. You’re right. You are. We should’ve told you sooner.” Behind her, Ned opened his mouth to interrupt, but Chuck waved him off, wanting to say her bit. “The reason we’re telling you now, though, is because we trust you. We trust you not to tell anyone because we know how much you care about Ned and me. You are our friend. Our close friend, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Okay?” Chuck squeezed her friend’s shoulders and looked into her eyes, imploring her to believe that they trusted her, would always trust her. After what felt like forever, Olive nodded.

  
“Okay,” she squeaked. “I believe you. I trust you. I trust that you trust me, etcetera.” She finally cracked a smile and pulled Chuck into a bear hug, which Chuck returned with all her might. In her peripheral vision, Chuck saw Ned’s shoulders relax and felt hers sag in relief as well. She reached behind her back and clasped his hand in hers, squeezing tightly. They would be fine. More than fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry idk if the ending is weird i couldn't figure out how to wrap it up. there might be an epilogue/alternate ending, but i'm not sure.

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally the first fic i've ever written so cut me some slack, ok? I'll keep writing it in my spare time (scarce these days bc college ew) and put up the next bit. Also I have this headcanon that Ned and Chuck can touch through clothing, they just don't know it/are v careful on the show. Comments are always welcome!!


End file.
